


Jigsaw Trial

by Selki



Category: Cable and Deadpool, Deadpool - Fandom, Jigsaw - Fandom, Marvel 616, Marvel AU - Fandom, Nathan Summers - Fandom, Saw (Movies), wade wilson - Fandom
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, kinda established secret not so secret relationship for cablepool, tiny bit of torture porn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-03-17 16:05:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3535586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selki/pseuds/Selki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hello Nathan, I want to play a game."</p><p>(This is set after the Saw movie series. If you haven't seen them and you're interested in seeing them, then there will be spoilers. If you aren't worried about spoilers, then everything will be explained in the fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Trap

Pipes dripping.

Rusty smell.

The creak of metal on metal.

_Am I in a steampunk fanfic again or…?_

He didn’t want to open his eyes, his body feeling like he’d run a marathon over the friggin’ Sahara. Why was he sore? He didn’t get sore. Or at least, he didn’t stay sore. He put a hand to his head and blinked his eyes open, groaning in sheer exhaustion. He sat up, looking around with bleary eyes. Was he in a warehouse or maybe an abandoned factory? There was nothing to tell him where he was. No sounds came in from the outside, only the whistle of the wind as it blew passed open windows.

He shivered and looked down at himself. He was naked from the waist up. His scarred body was healed, apart from several angry scars over his abdomen and chest. He touched them and flinched in pain. A clink of chain made him whirl around on his knees. The movement made him choke and cough. His hands flew to his neck. There was a kind of metal collar around his neck, chaining him to the floor. The chain was about three feet long allowing him to sit up, but little else. He turned to tug on the chain and froze.

“Cable?”

A huge man was lying on the ground facing away from him, but it was undoubtedly Nate Summers. Wade tried to crawl to him, but the chain kept him in place.

“Nate!”

Nate stirred at the sound of Wade’s voice, his TO infected hand going to his head. He breathed through the nausea and sat up, his eye glowing eerily in the gloom of the abandoned factory. His eyes widened at the sight of Wade chained to the floor.

“What--?” There was an electrical sound and Nate screamed in pain, clutching at his own collar around his neck. He tried to pull it off but it only resulted in another shock, almost making the mutant pass out from the pain. Wade recognised what was going on instantly. He knew what a shock collar looked like. People tended to think it was original to put those kinds of voice activated shock collars on him to stop him from speaking. Naturally it never worked.

“Stop, stop speakin’, Nate. Stop speakin’. It’s voice activated. Don’t—“

“Hello, Nathan. I want to play a game.”

The sound of static made the two men turn towards the source. On a screen about eight feet high on the wall, a puppet in a little black suit wheeled itself in on a tricycle, stopping with a squeak. There was no way either man could get to the screen, with Wade chained to the floor and Nate having been shocked to oblivion. He was sitting up though, swearing soundlessly. Fair dues to him for being able to sit up after a shock like that. A smaller man probably would have wet himself.

“You have helped to keep mutants safe, yet still you… _associate_ with hired murderers, knowing what they are,” Jigsaw’s voice was tinny over the cheap speakers.

“No fuckin’ way…” Wade breathed.

“You are undeserving of the power you’ve been given. In front of you is one of those murderers you have allowed to continue in this world. Both of your powers have been nulled in this room to make this a pure test. No powers to complicate any feelings you may have. Inside the killer in front of you, Nathan, are several incendiary devices.” Nate’s eyes flashed to Wade as the mercenary looked down at the scars on his chest. “Every minute one device will explode. The rules of the game are simple. Nathan, you must learn to walk away. You must learn that this kind of person will undermine the good you are trying to do.” The puppet paused. “You can leave the game any time you want. If you decide to walk out of this room, your collar will release, but every bomb inside this mercenary will explode at once, destroying his insides. If you haven’t left by the time the clock reaches zero, then your collar will explode. Walk away, or die yourself. Can you learn to stick to your priorities? Make your choice, Nathan.”

A clock appeared on screen, ticking down from ten minutes.

**10.00**

**09.59**

**09.58**

There was a moment of silence until Wade felt white hot pain explode in his stomach. He doubled over, unable to make a sound. He gasped for breath, trying to scream but couldn’t. Nate tried to go to him but he crossed a spray-painted line on the floor and collapsed from the electric shock. He pushed himself back over the line, away from the merc, trying to stop the electrical shock without swearing.

Wade swallowed down another cry and tapped the floor for attention. He held up his hand, making a circle with his thumb and index finger, the other three fingers raised. The universal sign for, “I’m okay”. The signing gave Nate an idea. The sign language he had learned in the future was a little different to this century’s American Sign Language, but enough was similar for him and Wade to communicate. Wade, of course, knew ASL, feeling the need to know how to speak in case he was ever in a position where he was unable to speak.

 _What was that?_ He signed and tugged at his collar again. He pointed to where the puppet had been. _Do you know what that was? Did you do something?_

Wade looked up from holding his stomach to watch Nate’s hands. “Wh—why the fuck do y’think I did something? That was Jigsaw! How do you not know--??” Nate was giving him that look that he gave him when he started talking about pop culture that the mutant had no time for. Wade sighed. “He’s a dude who kills people he thinks deserves it.” He spat blood onto the floor. “Nothing t’do with me… Not really anyway.” He curled in on himself and groaned in pain. He wasn’t healing. He glanced up at the clock.

**09.03**

**09.02**

**09.01**

Wade started to breathe heavily, trying to get as much oxygen into his system before—

He screamed in agony as another device exploded in his abdomen. Nate couldn’t help but look away as Wade held himself, the chain making him cough as he tugged on it. He swore and banged his fists on the concrete floor. Nate clapped his hands for attention. Wade held up one finger, asking for a moment before he was able to sit up. Two of the scars Jigsaw had made were bleeding but that was the least of their worries right now.

**08.32**

**08.31**

Wade was watching the clock count down, his heart beating so fast it hurt almost as much as his stomach. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the clock.

“Nate… you need to leave…”

_I’m not leaving without you. Got anything on you to help?_

“I’m not even wearing underwear; do I look like I got lock-picks on me?”

_You have eight more bombs inside you and you’re making jokes?_

“Have you not met me?”

**08.03**

Wade’s eyes switched to the countdown again and he braced himself. The next bomb was in his chest, knocking him onto his back, gasping for air. He started coughing blood, the device clearly puncturing the lung. Nate was at the very edge of his boundary, knowing if he tried to get closer he would be of no use at all. Instead he stood and started to look around the room for something to help them. It turned out the TV screen was actually projected onto the wall, not even a real screen. There was nothing in this room of any use to them. Just the door that led out of the building.

**05.47**

**05.46**

“You need—cough, cough—t’go…” Wade’s voice was very weak. “Go, Nate.” He was covered in blood, lying on his side to help himself breathe. He could see Nate pace like a caged lion, unused to seeing the soldier panic, not that Nate would admit to being panicked. He was trying not to whimper to make the situation worse but each breath felt like his lung was ripping. Nate threw a small pebble at him to stop him from making a move to sit up.

_Don’t move. Relax._

Wade tried to laugh but coughed up a little blood, his face, chest and arms now covered. “Y’can’t stay here. I’ll heal. Just piss off.” He kept his sentences short and to the point.

_I’m not leaving._

“So you’re— “ A ripping noise cut Wade off as another device exploded. His screams were hoarse now, his vocal cords torn and shredded from overuse. He was doubled over on his knees, holding himself, sobs wracking his shoulders. He took over thirty seconds to recover his breath long enough to speak. “Fuck dude, I’m not… gettin’ out… of this… in one piece. Just. Go.”

 _Yes you are. We’re going to get out of here. I just need to think._ He waved Wade away, the silence of the dank room deafening him.

“Just… facts… Nate.” He felt like death. It seemed like the clock was ticking down faster than before. That had to be a metaphor for life or something. Already he had only fifteen seconds left til the next detonation. He put his head down on his forearm and braced himself. He was almost resigning himself to never getting out of here. The only reason Nate was still looking for a way out was because he didn’t know of Jigsaw. Wade knew. No one got out of a Jigsaw trap. That was the whole idea.

Cable rubbed his eyes to try and clear his head. When he looked up, Wade had fallen in such a way that the back of his head was angled away from him. There was a large crescent shaped scar just at the base of Wade’s skull. He looked at the blood on the floor, seeping from the other wounds and back to the scar on the merc’s head and he started forward just as the clock ticked its way down to the four minute mark. He was trying to go to the crumpled merc, completely forgetting himself and the shock collar around his neck. He crossed the line and shouted, “Wade--!”

They both screamed at the same time, collapsing to the ground. Nate clutched at his collar, scoring and cutting his neck with his nails. By the time the shock cleared, Nate was lying on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. He looked around to see Wade passed out on his stomach, blood seeping from his wounds. If Nate could find out how Jigsaw, or whoever, was dampening their powers, Wade would be able to heal, Nate would be able to take both of their collars off and they could get out of this warehouse in any number of ways.

If he didn’t leave soon, he’d die. But if he left, the other devices in Wade would detonate, obviously killing him according to that scar on the back of his head. Nate couldn’t have that on his conscience. He didn’t know what Jigsaw had given them. What if their powers never came back? No, that wouldn’t make sense if Jigsaw was trying to better Nate’s life, but the madman would have no qualms about disabling Wade’s powers for good. People have tried before. What if the tiny bombs did actually kill Wade, while he, Cable, was running for his life?

He kicked at the rusted pipe in sheer frustration, one of many pipes in the room a man of Wade’s weight would have been able to climb. The pipe crashed to the floor, narrowly missing Wade’s motionless form. A small plastic black bag toppled out of one of the rusted holes onto the floor. Nate opened it, nearly dropping its contents.

They were pictures.

Of them.

 _Together_.

Each pipe on the room had another set of pictures. Someone had been watching them. While they had been on Providence, while they had been on mission. There were even photos of them together in a few of Wade’s safe houses. So that’s what Jigaw had meant by associating with Wade. How had any of these been taken? One of these had been taken in Wade’s own room, of Nate ‘associating’ with the merc.

The photographs fell to the floor at the sound of a strangled cry of pain. Nate forced himself to look, forced to watch Wade, knowing Jigsaw’s logic made Wade’s condition Nate’s own fault. The merc rolled onto his side, a small smile on his face.

“You look… like shit…” he whispered.

Nate sat cross-legged, as close as the line would allow. _Have you looked in a mirror in the last eight and a half minutes?_

Wade coughed a laugh, holding his stomach to keep his insides on the inside. He took a deep breath (or as deep a breath as his torn lungs would allow) and tried to keep eye contact with Nate, his face having grown very serious. “Dude, no doctors.”

_What?_

Nate raised an eyebrow at him. Wade could act pretty stupid at times, but Nate knew he wasn’t actually stupid. That was the difference, Wade had noticed, between Nate and everyone else in the Marvel universe, but Nate was starting to look at him the way everyone else did. He’d have to repeat himself, wouldn’t he? _Goddamn it…_

“I know… you’re gon’ try somethin’… Jus’ no doctors. Jus’… take me home…” his eyes were closing as he passed out again. “Anywhere… but th’fuckin’ doctors…”

The merc was so far gone that not even the next and last bomb in his chest managed to wake him. Just a tiny jerk and a tiny gasp of air were the only signs of life Wade gave Cable.

Barely seconds left. Cable made a split decision and ran.

Out the door. Into the night air.

**00.03**

**00.02**

**00.01**

**00.00**

The collar popped off Nate’s neck but he didn’t even notice it fall to the ground as he dashed back into the warehouse, across the spray-painted line to his friend’s side. He rolled Wade into the recovery position while he tried to gauge whether it was okay to move him. The man’s eyes and nose were bleeding, along with the scar on the back of his head.

“Jesus Christ, Wade…”

The tinny voice appeared over the speaker and the video was projected onto the wall once again. A white man in his fifties was now projected onto the screen, in place of the puppet. Nate couldn’t think of anyone he had hated more than the sadist in front of him. _Bad idea, letting me see your face…_ he thought.

“Congratulations, Nathan. You have passed your test. This is not a perfect world. Now you can see how you must learn to not let this kind of person continue to undermine the work you are trying to do. Most people are so ungrateful for the powers they have been given. Now you are more deserving of yours. Your powers will return to you in a matter of hours.”

The screen turned suddenly to black and the projection cut out, but Nate hadn’t been listening. He was checking Wade’s vital signs, trying desperately to find some kind of life. But there was nothing.

Wade Wilson was dead.

 


	2. The Hospital

Nate pushed his way through the hospital wing’s doors roughly, Deadpool nestled in his arms. His appearance in the wing was causing a commotion around him but Nate was oblivious to it. He was trying really hard to keep his heart rate under control. No point in panicking yet, there still might be something that could be done here.

The Jean Grey School had been the closest drive from the abandoned building where the trial had been held. Nate would have much preferred to have bodyslided to Providence but he hadn’t had much of a choice with no powers to access the technology. Hotwiring the car had been a simple job, though. He hadn’t lost his touch.

He lay Wade down on a gurney and looked for someone who knew what the hell they were doing. Nurses and doctors and even a few patients had made a space for the mountain of a man and were watching him lean over the pale bloodied mess of a person before him.

“Are you just going to stand there or--?” Someone recognised him and scurried off the fetch the head of the school. Only seconds later, Wolverine barged into the medical wing, the doors banging against the wall.

“Jesus, Cable, what the fuck do you think--?” He stopped and realised what Cable was standing next to. “Who is that?”

“It’s Wade,” Cable straightened and reached for a blanket from one of the beds to put it over Deadpool. “I need you to get his healing factor restarted so he can heal. Just do something to help him.”

Logan scrunched up his face slightly. A dead Deadpool isn’t always a bad thing. He wouldn’t lose any sleep over leaving him in this state, and even if he wanted to do something, he didn’t know what he could do. His own healing factor was usually a sure thing. If something went wrong with it, it was usually a pretty simple quest to get it back. Wilson’s healing factor was different. Having being enhanced in every way possible in Weapon X, there wasn’t always a clear reason why it often fritzed and stopped working. He remembered one time in the X-Force team when Wade had gotten rid of his healing factor using a serum, the healing factor had come back on its own. Healing factors _were_ rather resilient, after all.

He let out a long sigh at the look Cable was giving him. Wilson would be fine. Give him an hour and he’ll be back on his feet, using a food processor without the lid, or whatever Deadpool likes to do in his spare time. But the moment Logan took the mercenary’s hand to check his vitals, he started.

Without a word, he motioned for one of the doctors to come to his side. She had the power to give short bursts of electricity, as little as a static shock all the way up to the equivalent of a defibrillator. She unnecessarily tried to take Wade’s pulse before rubbing her hands and placing them on Wade’s chest. Wade’s body jerked over and over again until Nate couldn’t watch anymore. Wolverine pulled him aside, speaking in low tones. He knew how close Cable and Deadpool were, everyone did, but Nate needed to understand if Wade didn’t come back himself, he wasn’t going to.

“Nate, he’s cold…” he shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do. He’s dead.”

“I know he’s dead, Logan, but if you can get his heart started then we can keep him alive long enough for us to find out what the hell is wrong.” Nate was a soldier, well used to losing other soldiers in battle but he never took it lying down. Ever. It was just Cable’s style. He’d fight until the last man, even if that man was Deadpool.

Especially Deadpool.

Wolverine pinched the bridge of his nose. He liked Cable, he really did, but the man could be a bit of an idiot when it came to Deadpool. He looked over at the doctor who was now straddling Wilson using her power to try and restart his heart. The electrical charge didn’t affect her, so she was alternately rubbing her hands together and pressing her hands to his chest. Sweat was pouring out of her by now, used to calling time of death after only a couple of minutes of this. If they wanted to keep trying, they were going to have to get a real defibrillator soon.

But then suddenly—

“I got it! I got it, ha! Give me that ventilator…” The continuous shocking of Wade’s heart had managed to restart a very weak rhythm. Machines were rolled over to the gurney as she tipped Wade’s head back and inserted a long tube down his throat. His chest started to rise and fall slowly. Nate collapsed into one of the chairs and put his head in his hands. Wolverine watched him let out a long breath and rubbed his eyes.

“You know he’s not out of the woods yet, right?” Logan murmured, nodding over his shoulder to the doctors. “We’re talking brain damage here. A lot of brain damage. A lot more than he’s ever had. And without his healing factor, his cancer is going to make him a ticking time bomb. And he’s—.”

“I know, Logan,” Nate relaxed in the chair and pushed a hand through his hair as he watched Wade being transferred to a proper bed and being hooked up to more machines. The merc was rolled passed the two mutants.  “I just have to try. I owe him that at least.”

After the game, Nate wasn’t going to let go of Wade without a fight. Jigsaw had completely misunderstood Nate. If anything, what had happened in the game had made everything to do with Cable and Deadpool’s relationship more powerful, however cheesy that sounded. He leaned against the door frame, ignoring Logan’s gruff voice behind him, just watching a nurse wipe the blood off Wade’s still unscarred face. A doctor pushed passed Nate gently, a syringe in hand. They were getting an Operating Room ready for the mess that would be Wade’s organs after the tiny explosions in his chest and head. It was only then that Wade’s words from the game started to echo in his head: “ _No doctors_.”

“Eh, he can kill me when he wakes up.” He shrugged and started down the hallway to look for a shower and a new shirt.

“If he wakes up.”

“Keep your opinions to yourself, Wolverine.”

 


	3. Beep. Beep.

_Beep_. _Beep_. _Beep_. _Beep_.

The sound that had once made Nate literally collapse into a chair with relief was now driving him up the wall. It had been just over nine days since the trial and there was still no improvement in Wade’s condition. They had fixed him up, sure, but there was no brain activity. Wade was, for the desperate want for a better word, a vegetable. Nate was sitting in an armchair with a coffee in hand, watching the heart monitor, sending him into a trance.

 _Beep_. _Beep_.

The first couple of days, he had been trying to do some work but in the end Irene had turned up and told him to stop doing work that she’d only need to correct later. It was only today that she had turned up with some real work for him to do, keeping it simple, answering a few dozen e-mails to foreign ambassadors and various other assignments that didn’t require him to actually speak to anyone. She was worried about him spacing out during meetings and accidentally insulting a world leader with his silence, and after letting three coffees go cold while wondering how he was going to find Jigsaw and help Wade, Nate had to admit Irene probably had a point.

 _Beep_. _Beep_.

“Christ, Wade, you need to do something,” he muttered through his fingers as he watched Wade’s chest rise and fall. “You need to give me something here.”

 _Beep_. _Beep_.

“Great,” he said and stood all of a sudden, knocking over his empty coffee cup. He walked to the end of the bed and looked down at the comatose mercenary. The amount of tubes that were keeping Wade alive, it was hard to actually see the man at all. He had grilled Logan dozens of times on the nature of Wade’s healing factor but the simple answer was that the mutant didn’t know. Wade’s healing factor had had to deal with his cancer for years upon years, and Wade’s lifestyle and job had only made it stronger again. There was no way of knowing what nature the healing factor took anymore. It was just too synthesised. Nate felt a lump in his throat just thinking about how little he could actually do. Just sit here and beg gods he didn’t believe in for help.

“Talking to you and you can’t hear a word I say. I’m not worried about you. I’m not. But you need to give me something so I don’t go crazy here. Suppose I’m already going crazy if I’m talking out loud to you. I know people do this for loved ones all the time, but _you’re_ not supposed to get this sick.” He pointed at him, almost angrily. “You’re not the breakable one! You’re the—Oh.”

An elderly woman pushed her way into the room, heavy dark glasses over her eyes, her presence cutting Cable off from his tirade. Her movements were calculated but not slow as she made her way from the door to the bed. Her hand was only barely outstretched as she counted the amount of steps from the door to the bed.

“You’re Blind Al, I mean, you’re Al right?” Nate cursed himself. Looks like Irene was right in not giving him any big jobs to do. In his defence, that was how Wade had talked about her.

She took Wade’s hand, careful of any tubes and sat in the armchair Nate had just vacated. She didn’t seem to care about the slip of the name. She looked up at him. “Have the doctors said anything?”

Nate shook his head. “Apart from there’s no point keeping him on life support, not really.” He sat on the end of the bed, rubbing his eyes, so tired of hearing that phrase.

“He’ll pull through,” she smiled sadly and squeezed Wade’s hand. “That’s what he does.”

“Yeah I know…”

She rubbed her thumb over the back of Wade’s hand, sighing, before perking up slightly. “He’ll be fine. He hasn’t been put down yet; this won’t put him down either. He’s been through worse.”

 _Beep_. _Beep_.

Nate shook his head, trying not to hear the beep of the machines. The _constant_ beeping of the machines. He took a frustrated breath and swallowed down his emotions, completely unaware he was clenching and unclenching his fists. He sat on the windowsill and looked out, oblivious to what was actually happening outside. Cars came and went, but Nate couldn’t see them, lost in his own thoughts.

Al eventually left without a word. Nate didn’t even realise she was gone until Logan opened the door and motioned for Nate to follow him. They both stood by the door and watched two physiotherapists move Wade onto his side, making sure his muscles didn’t get stiff.

“Have you eaten today?” Logan looked Nate up and down. He had to crane his neck pretty far given Nate’s foot and a half advantage over him.

“Couple of coffees. Have you heard anything from the doctors?” Nate was in no mood for small talk. He folded his arms over his chest, keeping his eyes on Wade and the physiotherapists.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about Nathan,” he cleared his throat. “I’ve kept his name off of all the documents in here, but people are starting to talk. Deadp-- _Wilson_ ’s been out of action over a week, and people have noticed.”

“What’s your point?”

“Like I said, people are talking. Sooner or later, the doctors here are going to find out who he is, someone is going to tell them, and you know shit’ll hit the fan then.” Nate didn’t say a word. He didn’t even take his eyes off Wade and the physiotherapists. Logan grabbed his arm and made the mutant look at him. “Jesus, Cable, you need to get your head out of your ass. Wilson is a vegetable. If people find out he’s here, it’s gonna be my ass, not yours, bub.” The physiotherapists pushed passed them, leaving them alone. “No one recognises him yet.”

The ‘yet’ made Nate’s jaw set.

“Are you threatening me, Logan?” Cable levelled his gaze at him, making use of his foot and a half height advantage. The EEG monitoring Wade’s brain activity beeped to indicate a change in his brain activity. There was brain activity? Wade had brain activity? Cable swallowed, not daring to believe what he was hearing. The new sound made his chest go cold. He took Wade’s hand tentatively, remembering how cold the man had been when he had arrived at the hospital. The EEG made another noise.

“You have got to be kidding me…” Logan stood at the end of the bed, a newfound respect tickling his voice. “The kid doesn’t even have his healing factor, how is this even possible?”

Nate bent over Wade, brushing the hair off his forehead. “Wade?”

The machine kept beeping, little lines of sheer success sweeping across the screen. Logan stared at it for a few seconds to make sure he was seeing what he was seeing then left to get a doctor. Just as the door closed shut, Nate pressed his lips to Wade’s forehead, a grin growing on his face. “You did that just to piss Logan off didn’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for giving this fic time, seriously. It's my first published fic and I'd love any constructive criticism! 
> 
> You guys are perfect I swear *hugs all of you*


	4. Flight Mode

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Michelle for being my beta   
> (and not helping me with this chapter name)

Someone sighed as he opened his eyes _._

“He’s awake.”

Wade squirmed, unable to move very well, unable to speak. Goddammit. Was he drugged? How could he be drugged? He felt boneless. He was numb and tried to put his hand to his head but there was a slight tug. His eyes darted down, the only part of him that could move quickly. There was a needle in the back of his hand and a line going to a bag of clear liquid above his head. He made a move to sit up but rough hands grabbed him and held him down, strapping him to the bed. He tried to struggle as best as he could but the straps tugged tight over his chest holding him in place. He was so drugged that he couldn’t even hyperventilate with the panic of being tied down.

“Don’t move,” said a disembodied voice. The voice’s owner came to stand beside him, looking down at him. Wade was so high he couldn’t even discern any features on the man. He seemed to be almost glowing and no matter how many times Wade tried to will away this horrible numb feeling with his healing factor, he couldn’t. Fuck, was he helpless? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt helpless. He tried to glare at the man but he was probably just giving him a really threatening stroke face.

“You best hope this anaesthetic doesn’t wear off before I’m finished…”

His head was strapped down next, but as his head banged down onto the hard bed, an image of Nate passed out on a gurney flashed in the corner of his eye. The man left his eye line to anaesthetise him.

“Nnnaaa…” he mumbled, trying to call out but his voice was weak. What the fuck what was going on? Where was he? “Nate…” At least that time he managed an actual word. And Nate was easier to say than Cable. Little known fact about Deadpool was that he knew when to be economic with his words.

“Shut him up.”

A dirty rag was pushed into his mouth, duct tape keeping it there. The rag tasted vile, like motor oil. He gagged as the oil mixed with his saliva and dripped down the back of his throat. It all paled in comparison to the feeling of a scalpel slicing into his chest. He screamed into his gag, wondering when the hell the anaesthetic would kick in.

It never did.

**

Nate smoothed the hair back as Wade had yet another nightmare, surprisingly the first of which he himself had starred in. Ever since the spike in his brain activity, Wade had had been having short nightmares every hour or so. They were usually short memories only ever long enough for Wade’s tired, recovering brain to hold onto for a couple of minutes. 

Wade’s lack of healing factor meant Nate was able to tune into the mercenary’s dreams. He was constantly dreaming of the hospice and the experiments that had been done to him by Weapon X. If Nate hadn’t known that the men who were responsible for the experiments were now dead, he would have spent his time hunting them down rather than spending his time here and on Providence. He didn’t want to calm his dreams in case he did damage, figuring some brain activity was better than no brain activity or irreversible brain damage.

He wasn’t around the hospital all the time anymore, needing to catch up on everything going on in Providence. When he had spare time he would check in with doctors and sit with him for a while but he felt useless. Blind Al hadn’t turned up visit again; obviously content in the knowledge Wade would wake up and be fine. Was Nate supposed to feel like that? He gave a heavy sigh with that thought and stood. He took a last few checks of the machines before pulling his jacket on.

Wade’s brain activity was spiking again. He was clutching the blankets and his brow furrowed. Nate took his hand, noticing that Wade wasn’t having another nightmare. He frowned and pulled the armchair closer to the bed to shush him. He stroked his hair again, murmuring softly to him. He held his breath as Wade started to open his eyes.

“Hey…” Nate whispered, a smile tugging at his lips. “Hey Wade…”

Wade blinked, clearly confused, not understanding what was going on. He looked at Nate for a long time, trying to figure out who this guy was. He was still very medicated for the pain naturally but the penny was slowly dropping for him. He wasn’t making eye contact with Nate anymore, looking down at the tube that was helping him breathe.

_Something isn’t right. Something isn’t right. I need to get out. What the_ fuck _is going on?! I need to get out. I need to get up. I need to get this thing out of my mouth. I need… Ineedtogetoutofhere._

Wade was practically screaming his thoughts. Nate wasn’t even trying to listen in but he heard them clear as day. Wade didn’t know where he was but his phobia of hospitals was so deeply ingrained that it was possible that the smell of the cleaning products or the stark white of the ceiling or maybe even the feeling of how drugged up he was triggered him. When Wade tried to snatch his hand away Nate didn’t let go of his hand, knowing he was going to try and take the tube out of his mouth.

“Hey, Wade, it’s okay,” he kept his voice low. “Calm down. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

_Safe?? How the fuck am I safe? I can’t sit up. I can’t think. Oh fuck, I need to move, oh fuck… Would you let me go!?!_

“It’s okay…” Nate kept murmuring to him. “You’re safe. I’m here. You’re okay.”  He wasn’t going to mention that they were in a hospital right now to make everything worse.

_My head feels big…_

Wade tried to fight a little longer, but he was clearly exhausted. His eyes were glazing, the lids sliding closed. Nate squeezed his hand and stayed with him until his brain activity settled. He watched the screens, making sure he didn’t need to call for a doctor for anything specialised. Wade settled quickly, his grip on Nate’s hand loosening. The merc was sweating slightly from exertion but he seemed to be okay. He was fighting and that’s all that mattered. Looks like Blind Al was right.


	5. Witzelsucht

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter has been so long coming. Lots of exams and other jazz got in the way. Thanks as always to the people I annoy to make sure I haven't spelt someone's name wrong. Among other things. 
> 
> So yeah, thanks to Vic as always for being my Mr Miyagi when it comes to writing Cable and you all better thank Sofia for making sure this chapter was actually published. Okay, on with the show!

This time when Wade woke up he was on his own. He clenched his eyes closed and opened them to make sure he really was awake. Where was he? He could hear the steady _beep_ , _beep_ of a machine beside him and tried to swallow, but there was something hard stopping him. He felt his gag reflex start to protest as claustrophobia started to take hold and he sat up in panic, pulling at the tube that was helping him to breathe. He gagged as he pulled it clear of his mouth and tossed it aside. There was nothing in his stomach but he dry-heaved over the side of the bed anyway.

“Ugh, good morning to me…” He moaned and spat bile onto the floor. He rubbed his eyes before looking around.

White walls. Calm blue curtains. And that beeping… Was that a heart monitor? Is that where the beeping was coming from?

_Ah shit… Is this a hospital? Am I in a fucking hospital?_

“Fuck this.” He pulled off the heart monitor and the machine started squealing. He ignored it and kept pulling out the IV drips in his arms and on the backs of his hands. Doctors, alerted by the absence of a heart rate from the monitor, burst into the room followed by nurses and orderlies ready to bring Wade back from the brink of death again. The look of shock on all their faces almost made him want to laugh if he wasn’t in such a foul mood from waking up surrounded by medical equipment. He stood shakily and started to back up away from them.

“Sir, let’s put you back in your bed.”

“You’ve been a coma, sir.”

“Come on, come back to bed, sir.”

“Sir?”

Wade backed up against the wall, trying to decide what to do but his focus was splintering like shattered glass. He was looking at the hot doctor and wondering if getting her number while wearing a pink backless hospital gown with a still-attached catheter hanging off him was out of the question while also trying to decide whether the IV bag stand would make a better weapon than the IV line itself or if he should use one of the orderlies or maybe he should just go quietly and hopefully getting a nice lunch as a reward. There were other fly away thoughts about the catheter but they weren’t totally relevant here. He used to be able to handle that kind of noise in his head but by the time he had decided that he would prefer to use the clipboard, hands were already on him.

Time started to get very slow as he grabbed the wrist of the man who had a grip on his elbow and wrenched it until he heard a snap. When the man let go, Wade felt his elbow connect with the man’s nose. Another orderly moved forward, shouting for Wade to stop or something just as stupid, and Wade stepped to the side and delivered a chop to the man’s throat, making him fall to the floor gasping for breath.

He felt a kind of invisible wall stop him reaching for a nurse who was advancing on him with a hypodermic needle. He looked around wildly as a booming voice told all the staff to leave the room. A few of the doctors tried to protest but the orderlies, injured or otherwise, were out of the room like a shot. That left Wade and the huge man with the metal arm and the glowing eye behind in the private ward. Wade struggled and glowered at him.

“So are you gonna leave me and my catheter hanging here or are you going to let me go?” He tried to struggle again but he was stuck fast. “Let me go!”

Cable stood there looking at him, trying to believe what he was seeing. Wade shouldn’t be even be out of bed, let alone able to stand and fight with the orderlies. He could see blood on the front of Wade’s gown where he had torn stitches, but Wade hadn’t seemed to have noticed. Despite having pulled out the IVs in his arms, he was still very medicated, probably feeling very little by way of pain.

“Well?” He demanded.

“What are you going to do if I let you go?” Nate’s calm voice almost shook.

“If I tell you that, I’ll have to kill you.”

“Wade…”

Wade gave a long sigh. That tone of voice, the good old Voice of Reason, was never good. This guy was going to try and make him stay. He bit the inside of his cheek and waited for whatever the Voice of Reason was going throw his way.

“Do you remember what happened? Do you know why you’re here?” Nate stepped forward and allowed Wade’s hands to fall to his sides, but kept them there using his telekinesis.

“Let me guess. I’m sick right?” He looked pointedly around him. “Or is this some kind of joke?”

Nate was beginning to notice that Wade had not once referred to him by his name or even by Cable, something he always did when he was pissed off with Nate. The bigger man tilted his head. “Wade, do you know who I am?”

“Queen of Spain? Spain still have a queen? I dunno, I’m useless at that kinda thing. Forgive me, Your Majes—.”

“Wade, just give me a straight answer this one time. Do. You know. Who I am?”

The mercenary looked like he was thinking about it. After a second, his expression went blank and he looked down at himself, probably remembering that he couldn’t move as he started struggling again. Or maybe he was panicking. Nate tightened his telekinetic grip on Wade and made the man look at him but Wade wouldn’t meet his eyes, looking around the room or down at himself for a way out. Nate swallowed hard.

“You don’t know me, do you?” He stood tentatively in front of Wade, reaching out telepathically into Wade’s mind. It was a mess. An utter mess. His mind was going a mile a minute, thinking everything yet nothing all at once. Wade couldn’t possibly be able to comprehend the sheer amount of what he was thinking. To Nate, it was just fear and lots of flashing images. Nate reached further into his mind and hit a wall. No wonder Wade was having trouble sorting out his thoughts. The wall was almost like a dam, letting little scraps of thoughts through in drips and drabs into the chaos at the front of his mind.

Nate touched Wade’s cheek, making the merc freeze. He felt Wade wonder what the hell Nate was going to do. Nate shushed him and pushed at the wall. Wade gasped at the sensation. There were no words for what this felt like. Wade closed his eyes, unable to hold eye contact with the man for that long. To Nate, the wall seemed to be made up of a lot scar tissue, bleeding, pulsating. It was like it was infected. He pushed at it, trying to soothe where it hurt, helping his brain to heal itself. Considering the amount of trauma Wade had endured at the trial all those weeks ago, Nate was surprised the merc was managing to think at all. It was best to do this kind of thing when someone was conscious so you knew if you were doing damage. Nate knew what he was doing but he would never claim to be an expert in fixing someone’s brain and messing with their memories.

Suddenly the dam broke and started to crumble. Wade cried out in pain and Nate let go of his telekinetic hold on him, letting the merc fall to the floor as he held his head. Nate knelt beside him and rubbed his back but Wade jerked away from him. He pushed himself away and shook his head to clear it.

“Wade…?”

Wade’s head snapped up, a look of pure fury washing over him. “What did you do, Cable? What the fuck am I doing here?” He scrambled unsteadily to his feet. “I said to you no doctors and you decide bring me to doctor freakin’ central? I need to get out of here. Why the fuck did you bring me here?!”

Nate sat heavily on the end of the hospital bed and rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t explain how relieved he was that Wade was okay, that he hadn’t done any damage trying to help the merc. He looked up when he noticed Wade had gone still, sniffing the air.

“Is that… Did you have them give me chemo?” The medication was dripping from the IV, leaving a musky smell in the air, unmistakeable to someone who’d smelled it before. Wade shook his head as Nate’s eyes widened. “You didn’t…”

 “Wade, you’ve been in a coma for nearly three months. I didn’t—“

“You brought me to a hospital and on top of that, you gave me shitting chemo? Are you really that fucking thick?”

“You might have died! You weren’t conscious for me to ask so—“

“So y’what? Made an executive decision?! Fuck you, Cable! You know it didn’t work the first time. I _told_ you what it was like for me and you still—Christ… What the fuck is wrong with you?” Wade didn’t give him a chance to answer and started looking through the cupboards that dotted the room, banging the doors closed, muttering obscenities as he worked. Nate watched him, noticing that Wade had somehow shed the catheter in the time the merc had been shouting at him. Nate wouldn’t lie, that was impressive. He had expected a dramatic scene of removing the bag, urine everywhere, lots of screaming and swearing, but no. Deadpool was nothing if not surprising. After a full minute of Wade searching the room, Nate got up and touched his shoulder.

“Wade--?”

Wade recoiled from him. “Don’t you fuckin’ touch me. Where’s my stuff?”

“You can’t leave,” Nate bit down the hurt he felt from Wade’s reaction but tried to reason with him. . “You’ve still got a lot of—“

“Where’s. My. Stuff, Cable?”

Nate took a deep breath, trying to stop himself from knocking the merc out and put him back in his bed, he was in range after all, but he took a step back. “They were thrown out. They were—“ He tried to explain that Wade’s clothes had been destroyed by the sheer amount of blood and everything else during the trial, there was no stitching them back together after that, but Wade turned away from him and started toward the door.

“Wade, I can’t let you go.”

“Stop me then, Priscilla.”

Wade’s glare as his hand rested on the doorknob almost made Nate stop in his tracks, but he backed the merc into a corner, not realising the man had found a scalpel during his search for his clothes. “Wade, your healing factor is gone. I’m not letting—“

“It’s not gone. It’s never gone, you fuckin’ idiot. Maybe instead of giving me chemo you could have been looking for someone to get it back, but did you? Didn’t fuckin’ think so, now back the fuck up.”

Nate licked his lips, trying to get his head around how angry Wade was. He understood of course, but he had (stupidly) expected some amount of gratitude. A “thank you for saving my life now go fuck yourself for bringing me to a hospital” kind of thing. He could hear Wade’s thoughts, scrambled as they were, screaming to get out and fix his healing factor, to punch Nate’s stupid face in, to eat some dirty greasy food as soon as he got out of here, and also wondering why he had been put in a pink hospital gown. He was really manly, right? Hearing his thoughts, Nate knew Wade wasn’t going to stay willingly unless Nate tied him down (now there was an idea) but he couldn’t predict when and how Wade would escape, because he would. He gripped the shoulder of the gown and pinned him to the wall, making the merc wince in pain.

“If you kill anyone on the way out, I _will_ drag you back here and throw you in a room with very few windows until you are better. I swear if you kill--”

“Get them out of my way then,” Wade replied with a smirk, pressing the scalpel into the inside of Nate’s thigh, right above the artery. Nate stiffened. “You wanna keep everyone safe, letting me go is the best way to do it.”

“You’re sick…” Nate tried one last time.

“I’m. Fine.”

Nate shook his head and stepped back.

“Good choice.” Wade saluted Nate with the scalpel and left the room. Cable grabbed the nearest doctor he could find and told her to put over the hospital’s intercom to not let anyone touch Wade, to just let him go, that he was armed and dangerous.

By the time Wade left the hospital, he was fully dressed in a hoodie and jeans, the scalpel tucked into his jeans pocket. He was outright ignoring the torn stitch on his side. He had to get out of this city and luckily, there were only a few things he needed before he set out to find Weasel. That guy usually knew what to do. He pushed his thin hair back and pulled his hood up, grateful his skin was no longer full of scars. It would make sneaking back to his safe houses and getting out of the country much easier.


	6. The Penetraitor

When Wade had cancer before the healing factor, he had always been cold. Down to the bone cold. All the treatments he had undergone before had left him underweight, shivering all the time, usually unable to eat because the chemotherapy made him constantly nauseous. After being in a coma for over four months, muscle atrophy had definitely set in, leaving him over thirty pounds lighter than he had been before the Jigsaw trial. On top of that he couldn’t keep food down anymore. It was getting better though. Even that McDonalds Big Mac he’d had in Red Square was turning to glue in his digestive system as he walked.

It was over two weeks since he had gotten out of the hospital and trying to keep a low profile and get to Russia had been pretty difficult. He had wanted to take a cargo plane and fly to Moscow the minute he’d been ‘released’ from Cable’s care, but the truth was he hadn’t been well enough. He had holed up in a safe house he’d never brought anyone to, not even Cable, and stocked up on buttermilk and graham crackers, the only stuff he’d been able to eat before Weapon X had sunk their claws into him. He was trying to be smart about getting his healing factor back. He had a plan, or half a plan at least, but he knew he had to get his strength back before making any kind of move. He lifted weights and did his own physiotherapy while catching up on his Netflix viewings.

And when the hell did they add Friends to Netflix, and why the hell didn’t he wake up sooner?

He had pushed himself a little harder than he should have, putting six months of physio into just over a week, with very little calories. He was sore, aching every time he moved. He’d torn stitches three or four times and had needed to stitch them up himself while sober. He was still impressed with himself with that. The bag he was carrying, full of various items he might need to break into where he was going, was really heavy making him sway on the spot when he stopped walking. So he didn’t stop walking. He’d get to where he was going, chow down on some more crackers then get on with his job. A couple of streets off Red Square and Wade found himself ducking down a long alley, vomiting onto the brick wall of the apartment block. There went his Big Mac. He soothed the hurt in his throat with his carton of buttermilk and swore bitterly, making the decision to steal a car as soon as he happened across a parking lot.

It was going to be a long drive to Murmansk.

**

Wade had been feeling a strong fever creeping up on him for the past twenty minutes, just passed the city sign for Murmansk. He rolled down the window, sweat starting to pour down his neck. He decided to pull over when he started seeing double. He got out of the car and sat on the bonnet.

“Oh fuck…” His stomach cramped tightly, making him double over and vomit over the wheel of his stolen car. “Never gonna make fun of period having people again.” He took a drink of water and spat it onto the ground. “Fuck me sideways, never thought I’d miss having a fucking healing factor. Least I wasn’t vomiting on the side of the road all the fucking time.” He was aware he was speaking to himself, but he didn’t care. The voices in his head weren’t there for him to talk to, so he guessed he’d have to have intelligent conversations with himself until he was… _fixed_.  

He got back into the car and sped off as soon as his double-vision calmed down. He hadn’t been in Murmansk in over a decade but it hadn’t changed much. It had just gotten taller. He was heading towards the docks, where the warehouses were more run down, rather than the newer more industrial ones. Where he was going there was little to no police presence, which meant a low chance of him being stopped and questioned about his business in the area.

He didn’t bother knocking when he found the warehouse he was looking for. He even didn’t bother with the door. He walked around the back, finding a dumpster with a broken fire escape ladder above it. He was more or less nausea-free at the moment, so he seized his chance and climbed up onto the dumpster to the ladder and entered an open air vent at the upper level of the warehouse. He crawled through it, breathing through his mouth so the damp air didn’t bring the nausea back. He came to a grill that allowed him to look into a small room. The vent was at ground level in this room, so he could easily see that it was empty.

 _Perfect_ , he grinned to himself.

He elbowed the grill open and crawled into the room. He sneaked through the hallways, spotting some cameras. He smirked. Obviously no one was manning them because the alarm hadn’t been sounded, but that worked in his favour. He eventually found the room he was looking for. He opened the door slightly to a darkened room and spotted a man a little smaller than himself, illuminated only by a computer screen. He was asleep in his chair, his jaw hanging open, snoring loudly. He creeped in and grabbed the man’s shoulders.

“WEASEL!”

The man jumped up out of the chair and let out a scream, whirling around to see who had scared him. He swore and reached for a gun he had beside his computer only to find it was gone. He froze, mid-swear and slowly turned around, knowing the man who had startled him had the weapon.

Meanwhile, Wade was almost tearing a stitch laughing so hard. Of course he had taken Weasel’s gun, just to freak the man out all the more. He sighed, wiping his eye. He loved his work. Weasel was backed up against his desk, waiting for Wade to shoot him. He didn’t recognise him, making Wade start laughing again. Wade reached for the lights and pulled his hood off his head.

“Sleeping on the job, Weasel?”

“Job? What?” Weasel licked his lips, nerves making his voice shake. Then the penny dropped. He didn’t know how he knew, but now that he’d figured it out, there was no way he was wrong. “Deadpool? What happened to you?”

Wade grinned. “Beautiful, amn’t I?”

“You look like death warmed up.”

Wade’s face fell. He didn’t look that bad, did he?

“What happened to you?” He asked again.

“Lost my healing factor and you’re gonna get it back for me.”

“I am? Wade, you put me in the Box last time we met, why the hell would I help you?”

“Because I’ll bypass the Box completely this time and kill you if you don’t. Also I have your gun.”

Weasel chewed his lip, clearly defeated. There was never a way to reason around Deadpool. He gave a long sigh and took off his glasses, deciding the most painless way of doing this was to just get to work. “I’ll need to take your vitals and some blood and I might need some bone marrow and maybe a lumbar puncture.”

“Wow, that sounds like so much fun.”

“Hey, this is your idea.”

“I still have your gun, Weasel.”

Weasel shrugged and grabbed his tablet, swiping across the screen to unlock it. He clucked his tongue and pushed passed Wade, making his way out of the room and down the hall. He didn’t bother indicating for Wade to follow, knowing the merc would do it out of curiosity anyway. They walked down a long corridor and down two flights of stairs into a basement room. It was full of chrome and glass and looked very medical. It was then Wade decided to take a small cooler out of his backpack and put it on the table. He pointed at it.

“That’s my blood. See if you can work with that before sticking me with needles. Deadpool out.”

Wade walked out of the room and back to his car, leaving Weasel unzipping the cooler and looking at three bags of blood with “BLOOD TYPE DP” printed across the front. He rolled his eyes and got to work.


	7. Pursuit

Worry didn’t cover what Nate felt when Wade ‘discharged’ himself from the hospital. He had decided almost instantly to follow the merc telepathically to make sure Wade didn’t try to do something stupid like give himself so much physiotherapy that he vomited into a couple of pots and a fruit bowl. That’s not physiotherapy. It was almost certainly self-harm, but Nate would have compartmentalise that for the moment until he had the chance to talk some sense into him or drag him kicking and screaming back to the medical unit.

Wade was planning something, no doubt. Nate had been keeping a close eye on his thoughts to make sure whatever the plan was wasn’t suicidal. Wade must know Nate was checking in on him because he was refusing to think about where he was going and who he was seeing, until Wade slipped up and thought for a full hour about taking a cargo plane to Murmansk. And then it was back to nothing again. And then a lot of nothing which told Nate the merc had left the country.

Irene was furious when Nate told her to hold down the fort. A lot of slurs were sent his way until Irene calmed herself down. She handled Providence before on her own of course, but the fact Nate was leaving once again because of this psychotic mercenary…

_Deep breath, Irene. You’re fine. Deep breath. You can murder him in his sleep when he gets back._

He left for Murmansk very soon after that. Acclimatising to a city he hadn’t been to in a while took him about an hour, differentiating between the voices in his head while he searched for Wade’s Demi Moore inner voice. He was in the warehouse area of the city, in a rundown motel.

It was early in the morning, so the screaming voice in his head could probably mean that Wade was sleeping, having another nightmare. Nate sat on the roof of the building for over an hour wondering if he should go in. Check on the merc. Make sure he was okay. Wade would hate him for following him, but if the other choice was Wade dying? Well, it wasn’t really a choice at all. He bodyslided into the room so he didn’t have to use the door. True enough, the merc was sleeping, moaning lightly because of the nightmare. Nathan made to walk forward but the wood creaked under his weight. He froze.

“I knew you’d fuckin’ follow me,” Wade said hoarsely, not opening his eyes, not even moving.

“I just wanted to—“

“Drag me back to the States? Not happenin’.”

“No, Wade,” Nate tried but stopped. That was actually what he wanted but he’d never get anywhere with Wade if he said it aloud.

Wade sat up slowly, leaning against the wall. He was in the middle of a fever and honestly, he wasn’t actually sure whether he was talking to the real Cable or not. Well, even if it wasn’t, Wade would give it a piece of his mind. He was used to talking to hallucinations after all.

“I wanted to make sure you were alright,” Nate ended. That was the main reason he had come here after all. No point in lying. Wade would know.

“Alright?” Wade scoffed. He turned on the lamp by the bed. It was a mistake because now Nate could see the fevered flush of Wade’s cheeks and chest. “That was why you pumped me full of that poison, as well, wasn’t it?”

“That’s one of the main treatments for cancer, Wade! You have cancer. I gave you treatment. It’s not poison.”

“Can’t get angry at a cancer patient Na— _cough_ , _cough_!” He bent over in a coughing fit, one hand over his mouth, the other around his sore stomach. He’d been coughing so much over the past few days that he hadn’t needed to do all those crunches to get abs. Nate stepped toward the oxygen canister beside the bed but Wade put his hand out. “Don’t you come near me.”

“Wade—!”

Nate continued towards the tank where the mask was hanging but Wade scrambled out of bed, putting the bed between them.

“I said, _cough_ , don’t come near me.”

He’d seen the same look on Wade’s face before, but never directed at him. Wade was hurt, pure and simple. Nate understood, but at the same time, all he had ever wanted was for Wade to be okay. He picked up the oxygen mask and threw it as far as it would reach on the bed. “Would you take some oxygen yourself then?”

“Will you tie me down and make me if I don’t?” The coughing had subsided long enough for Wade to glare at Cable. It had really knocked the wind out of him, making him feel light headed and nauseous. He put his hand on the wall, refusing to sit down again. He wanted Cable to leave, but then he didn’t. He had always liked a good fight with the mutant, but not about his health. Nate just wanted to make sure he was okay, but Wade didn’t feel safe around him anymore. Or he did, just… _too_ safe. Like Nate would wrap him up in bubble-wrap and never let him outside while childproofing the furniture.

Okay, maybe Nate wouldn’t do that.

But, _still_!!

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Nate sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face.

Wade looked down at himself. Nate had been talking? Then, nope, he hadn’t, but he wasn’t admitting that to Nate of all people, even though he knew Nate knew already. He watched Cable sit on the end of the bed, far enough away from Wade that he wasn’t encroaching on his space. They stayed silent for over a minute but the silence was deafening, as they say. Neither wanted to be the first to speak, but Nate knew he’d have to be the bigger person and let the silence go. He took a long breath.

“I just want you to be—“

“If you say safe I will break your arm,” Wade cut across him. Now that the silence was broken he could speak. _Winner_ …

“—okay. I want you to be okay.”

“Yeah, whatever…” Wade gave up and grabbed the oxygen mask, breathing in deeply. He sat on the edge of the bed facing away from Nate.

“Do you blame me for Jigsaw?”

Wade finally looked up from his knees and dropped the mask so he could speak. “Where did that come out of?”

“Do you?”

“You’d like that wouldn’t you? Make you the tragic hero in the situation, coz if I blamed you for Jigsaw and then you gave me ‘treatment’, that’d make me the villain of the piece, wouldn’t it? No, I hate you for bringing me to the doctors when my last _fucking_ breath was me _begging_ you not to.”

“You hate me?”

“And of course, _that_ is what you focus on…” He put the mask up to his face again. “Dick.”

“I’m sorry for the chemo, Wade, I am.” Nate stood, towering over the bed. “But I won’t apologise for bringing you to the doctors. They’re the reason you’re alive right now.”

“And I’m in a great fucking state, aren’t I?” Wade took the mask away from his face long enough to speak.

Nate licked his lips and looked at the door. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Even if I tell you to fuck off, you’re not going to are you?” But Nate didn’t answer. Wade dropped the mask and stood. “You are such a fuckin’ asshole! You think coz you saved my life that I should be nice to you? I should be grateful? Of all the things I could’ve said to you in the trial, I say ‘no doctors’. I didn’t say anything else—oh my God, just fuck you Cable.” He was in Cable’s face now. “Why do you think you can just do whatever you want?!”

“You mean, save my best friend or are we talking about something different now?”

Wade punched Cable as hard as he could, completely forgetting about his lack of healing factor. His fist connected with TO tissue, the break audible in the room. While Nate stumbled back, Wade roared in pain, holding his broken hand. He sat on the bed again and cradled his hand. Nate rubbed his jaw and got a little closer.

“Wade…”

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

All Nate wanted was to sit beside Wade and look at his hand, fix it up and make sure the merc didn’t do something stupid with it, but he knew Wade didn’t want that. He would have to keep an eye on him from a distance, like he was doing before. Wade had been happier with that. He made for the door but before he put his hand on the handle, “So that’s it then, is it?”

“What? You just said--!” Nate was getting sick of these mind games.

“I didn’t say go, you dick.”

“Wade, calling me names really isn’t making you any clearer. Do you want me to go or not?”

Wade’s jaw clenched and bit the inside of his cheek. He couldn’t breathe and it had nothing to do with his illness, feeling like someone was sitting on his chest. He could feel Nate looking at him and waiting for an answer. He had to give him answer now. He couldn’t meet his eyes but shook his head all the same.

“Okay then,” Nate nodded and sat down on the bed beside Wade. He put his hand on the merc’s wrist, not letting his happiness show when Wade didn’t pull away. Wade liked the weight of Cable’s hand on him, he’d missed it, despite it only being a couple of weeks since they had been together (while Wade was awake). They had survived longer before.

Nate moved up a little closer to Wade and leant in to kiss him but Wade angled his head away. At first Nate had thought Wade was still angry but Wade shook his head.

“I threw up earlier. Breath stinks.”

Nate chuckled and nudged Wade’s face back to look at him. He pressed his lips against Wade’s, his hand slipping around to the merc’s neck. Wade himself deepened the kiss when Nate didn’t pull away, but Wade really broke the mood by coughing straight into Cable’s mouth. He pulled back and put the mask on the merc’s face. Wade glared at him but breathed all the same.

“Stop being a shit…” Nate shook his head with a smile and kissed Wade’s forehead. “Look, don’t wanna push boundaries but…”

“You can sleep on the chair.”

Nate tilted his head at the chair. It wasn’t even a chair; it was a three legged stool. “Wade—“

“Dude, I’m joking.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, rent your own room.”

“Wade…” He sighed heavily.

“Fine, freeloader…” Wade got up and went to the tiny en suite. “Think I’m gonna throw up. See you in an hour. And find my crackers in the duffel, will you?”

Nate found the crackers and opened the door to the bathroom slightly. Wade was on his knees, coughing up bile. Wade kept bottles of water in the bathroom for when he felt like he was going to vomit. At times like this, when Wade had nothing in his stomach to throw up, the bottles of water helped the burning in his throat. The weather in Murmansk at this time of year kept the water cold, turning the little en suite into a fridge. It was also handy for Wade’s fevers even though he knew he should really be keeping warm. It was easy to catch pneumonia if you got too cold too quickly. Nate felt the wall of cold hit him and although he wanted to get something to keep the merc warm, he also knew the thought wouldn’t be welcome. Instead he slid down the wall beside the sink and kept Wade company until he was finished throwing up.

“You know Blind Al visited you while you were unconscious?” he said. “She said she knew you were going to get better.”

“She always somehow knows that kinda shit.” Wade grabbed one of the bottles but before he drank, he started laughing. “You take up the whole wall dude. You should really give up those steroids. Not good for the ol’ downstairs.”

“Haven’t heard you complaining yet.”

They sat on the bathroom floor for over an hour, bantering back and forth. It was strangely comfortable considering what had happened before. Nate even bandaged his hand so there wouldn’t be any extra damage come morning when they could get some proper supplies. When they finally got into bed, Wade was asleep in seconds, drooling on Nate’s arm. Nate smiled and shook his head, staring at the ceiling. This was really the last thing he had expected to happen when he appeared in the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't get into why this chapter is so late but I am so so sorry!! 
> 
> I'm already working on the next chapter so it should be out soon!


	8. What Happens in Murmansk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...doesn't always stay in Murmansk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys,  
> I am so sorry for such a long wait but I have had, let's say... a life-altering experience.  
> I've been pretty sick, in hospital and such, so there will be spaces between each chapter from now on that I would much prefer to be shorter. I hope even with these long absences you will still enjoy the chapters I upload.  
> I am really enjoying this story so I won't stop writing, I promise.

Weasel was rifling through papers with a pen in his mouth as he walked down the small motel corridor. He had been awake nearly fort-eight hours straight, happily twitching on caffeine, looking for a way around whatever had managed to cancel out or stop Wade’s healing factor. Despite always wanting to have a look at how the healing factor worked on both a biological and neurological level, Weasel still couldn’t help those little lingering thoughts, namely how in the hell had Wade found him? And so easily? He’d come to Russia for that exact reason, to get away from the madness and the chaos that followed Wade around. He wasn’t willing to die just to be around him anymore.

He put his back to the door and used his elbow to work the handle and push the door open. He used his other elbow to switch on the light and proceeded to drop every single paper he’d been holding. There was movement behind him and he looked up to see Deadpool sitting up with his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing his eyes of the sleep. He truly looked like death warmed up, both pale and flushed at the same time. As he picked up his papers and stood to face the merc, he spotted a massive shadow rise on the other side of the bed.

“Jesus Christ!” He jumped the height of himself, realising it was Cable ( _the_ Cable!!!) who was pulling on his trousers. That side of the room had been hidden by the door and was the reason why Weasel hadn’t spotted the mountain of the man until the door had started to swing closed.

“Yeah he likes to think so,” Wade chuckled. Nathan shot him a withering look but before he could tell Wade where to go, the merc was on his feet and taking the papers off Weasel to go through them. He couldn’t make heads or tails of any of the diagrams so he looked at him. “Find anything?”

“Yeah shit loads! First thing I found was—wait, you know it’s a mutant power right?”

Wade took a very long time to reply, clearly counting to ten. Nate frowned at him. Since when did Wade have patience? “Tell me you found more than that.” His tone was very low and very dangerous. Weasel took that as a fierce yes and plowed on.

“Okay, okay, right, okay, you see, it’s not supposed to be _in_ your body and, and, and whoever attacked you knew that!” He was so excited to tell them what he’d found that he could feel himself starting to shake. “Basically right, the people who gave you the healing factor practically crazy-glued it onto your DNA and then when you were attacked, they crazy glued something _else_ on top of that! And that—“

“Wait a sec,” Wade waved a hand. “Did you say something _else_?”

“Uh yeah?” Weasel was already looking for an exit.

“Something _else_. So you don’t know what it is?”

“Um...”

“Weasel, I swear to _fuck_ , answer me.”

“No I don’t, but—“

“But you know how to fix it?”

“...No.”

Wade started advancing on him, pushing the papers into Cable’s chest, a sort of ‘hold my poodle’ moment. “Are you telling me you crawled out of your hole you call a lab to tell me you _can’t fix it_?” Weasel gave a sharp intake of breath when the merc grabbed the front of his shirt, the jerk dislodging his glasses. “You come in here with all these papers and diagrams and all you know is that it’s a _fucking_ mutant power?”

“I—I know it’s organic and, and, come on Wade, I’m trying!”

“Well fucking try harder!” Wade pushed him with force towards the door. “Get out of here, Weasel!”

Weasel didn’t even bother to collect his papers from Cable before scurrying out of the room. He knew he had back-ups on his various laptops and tablets so it really didn’t matter. He didn’t even stop for breath until he was out of the motel and down the block. He was not risking being put back in the Box.

“That was a bit much, wasn’t it?” Nate spoke for the first time as he put the papers down on the bed.

“Oh shut up,” Wade snapped. “It’s not like you have any answers, Mr Messiah Complex.”

Nate jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the door, not taking any heed of the name. “So you’re going to threaten the only person you’ve allowed to try and get the answers?”

“He works better when I threaten him.”

Wade started to get dressed, pulling his jeans on roughly. He was annoyed with himself for getting his hopes up. He should have known Weasel wouldn’t have found a cure this soon. This was only his fourth day in Russia, and only third day in Murmansk, after all. He was trying to be smart about going after Jigsaw by getting his healing factor back first, but as always, his patience was wearing thin. Although he wasn’t usually one for torture, he had decided early on that he would gladly make a very slow exception for Jigsaw.

“You can’t go after Jigsaw before you get your healing factor back, Wade,” Nate said as he moved to stand in front of him.

Wade glared up at him. “Stay out of my head, Cable.”

“You’re practically shouting it from the rooftops; it’s not my fault,” Nate raised an eyebrow. “You’re not well enough to go after him. Don’t get angry at me, Wade. I’m just stating facts. You broke your hand last night—“

“I’m gonna cut off that lecture before you get into the swing of it,” he stood and pushed passed Nate to grab his shirt from the floor. “Facts are if I decide to go after Jigsaw instead of getting my healing factor back, that’s what I’m gonna do. You telling me not to will not change my mind, get me?”

Nate’s jaw set as he watched Wade pull on his holsters. Wade was going to get killed again before they got any answers and Nate could only put up with so much of this kind of stress without duct taping Wade to a tree and going after Jigsaw himself.  The merc had closed himself in the bathroom to check his bandages, the thought making Nate sit heavily on the bed with a long sigh. A few of the papers Weasel had left crinkled under his thigh. He picked them up slowly and flicked through them, licking his lips thoughtfully. Hearing the lock on the bathroom start to unlatch, he pushed them into one of the pouches around his waist and tried to look natural, but Wade didn’t even notice that Nate was acting half way suspicious. He just his boots and walked straight out the door.

The instant the door slammed shut, Nate bodyslided to the labs on Providence. The head scientist raised her eyebrows at the sight of her boss standing in front of her with his shirt buttoned badly. She pushed her glasses up to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. Cable handed over the papers and told her to get her team to continue on the same vein as research that Weasel had been on. She nodded and turned back to her work without a word. Nate let out a burst of air before teleporting back to Russia to find Wade and keep the man out of trouble.


	9. Рак

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9 Рак all in one place.  
> As promised.

Wade was halfway across the city before he calmed down enough to stop and think about where he was going. He was panting but not from what his cancer was doing to his lungs. He was still furious, utterly furious that he wasn’t really any closer to getting his healing factor. If he was honest he just wanted to have the chance of actually slaughtering whoever it was who had named themselves Jigsaw and know he’d be able to celebrate afterwards. In his frustration, he kicked one of the nearby dumpsters, making a loud noise, causing one of the tenants in the flat above to open their window to tell him to fuck off, that it was only five in the morning.

 _Five in the morning? What a shitty hour to be awake_ , he thought. _This is all Weasel’s fault_.

He flicked through his memory to remember what the Russian equivalent to flipping the bird was and remembering, he held up his thumb at the tenant who quickly returned the gesture and slammed their window shut.

He started walking towards the centre of the city, wondering how would he be able to find an American serial killer while he was stuck in Northern Russia. He hadn’t used information brokers in years, not since he’d gotten his healing factor in Weapon X. Before Jigsaw had meddled in his DNA, he had been used to being able to gather information on his own without needing to be afraid that he’d be killed before the mission had even started. He hadn’t realised how much he would actually miss his healing factor until he’d finally lost it.

He flipped open his phone and picked Blind Al’s name out of his contact list. Being a retired international spy, Wade couldn’t think of anyone better to gather information on Jigsaw (plus what else would she be doing other than sitting in her threadbare armchair waiting for Wade to call). He pinched the bridge of his nose as a headache started to bloom behind his eyes.

“Wade?” The old lady sounded tired. What time was it in the States? Wade couldn’t do math when his head was this sore. Maybe she’d been taking an old lady nap?

_Tell me this isn’t a migraine…_

“Hey Al, need a favour,” he said. There was no time for small talk. The light was searing into his eyes. He needed to get out of the morning sun as quickly as possible before his head exploded. “Jigsaw. Need everything you can find as fast as you can. I can’t from here.”

“Are you okay?” She sounded more awake, and a little concerned.

“Fine. Migraine. Fine. Just get me the stuff.”

He hung up before Al could reply and started to walk back to the motel. His vision was starting to blur and the roar of the passing cars was making him dizzy. He ducked around the back of a large hotel to take a break from the noise before trying to get back to his own motel again. It wasn’t part of his plan to end up crouched between a delivery truck and a large stack of dining chairs with his forehead pressed to his knees, his arms over his head, trying to block out the noise of the city and yet here he crouched.

He cursed the brain tumour that was causing this bastard of a migraine, but eventually he couldn’t think at all, trying to stay as still possible, any movement making his face feel like it had a pulse. He couldn’t even make a noise without sending a shot of searing agony through his head.

 

**

 

When Nate body-slided back to Russia he found following Wade was harder than he’d anticipated, considering the proximity. The man was erratic, walking quickly and taking random turns down small alleys. By the time Nate teleported to the location, Wade had already moved on. Nate was trying not to be too worried because even though Wade had left the motel in such a foul mood, he had seemed healthy enough. That is, he hadn’t been worried until the thought trail he had been following was cut short and replaced by the sensation of pain. Pure pain.

He body-slided to the area Wade’s thoughts were coming from, in front of a rather fancy hotel with a doorman and black town cars parked outside. What was Wade doing here of all places?

Looking around, Nate wandered down the delivery entrance beside the hotel. There were no cameras down this way so it was private enough that someone like Wade wouldn’t be told to move on immediately. He rounded the corner and his eyes widened.

“Wade?”

Wade didn’t even look up. He knew who it was. Of course Nate was following him again. He felt the bigger man kneel beside him, wincing when the gravelly “body-slide by two” reached his ears. They teleported making Wade nearly pass out from the pain, the searing ache spread down his neck and his shoulders. Nate steered him to the bed and made him sit down. He pulled his knees to his chest and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Uttering a long, frustrated noise.

“Get the curtains, will you?”

There was a rustling and a thump as Wade’s duffel bag was put on the bed in front of him.

“Is there anything I can…?” Nate asked.

“You can shut up,” Wade half-whispered. “Your voice is going straight through my head…”

He started digging through the duffel, his eyes almost squeezed shut as he started looking for his painkillers. It was a lozenge type tablet, one of the strongest opioids you could get. He popped it into his mouth and put the heels of his hands back onto his eyes.

He was so ready to have his healing factor back…

 

**** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ****

 

Wade was sitting up in bed when Cable got back after visiting Providence for updates on Weasel’s research. Not much was happening on the island, apart from a few more people had been taken onboard to help, the most notable of which was Beast. The mutant had been working with Wolverine’s healing factor for years so he’d been an obvious choice to help get Wade back on his feet. Nobody had been told the finer details of the work they were doing, not even that they were working on Deadpool, just that something had gone wrong with this supposed mutant’s powers and it needed to be fixed. Hank McCoy was a perfect choice, being as kind-hearted as he was so well known to be. He didn’t ask Cable questions, just got on with his work to help this mysterious ‘mutant’.

“What are you… what are you doing?”

Wade was surrounded by papers and a laptop, a highlighter behind his ear, sitting cross-legged with his track pants low on his hips. He seemed a lot more chipper today, more focused but didn’t look up to speak.

“’Ookin’ fo’ ‘igsaw,” he said through the pen in his mouth. He took the pen out to mark something and repeated himself. “Looking for Jigsaw. Get me anything on your travels?”

Nate didn’t mean to ignore him, but he noticed a light sweat on Wade’s brow. He sat on the side of the bed to put the back of his hand on Wade’s forehead, but the man batted his hand away.

“Jesus Christ,” he used the highlighter as he pushed Nate’s arm out of his sight-line, accidentally on purpose drawing a line down the mutant’s arm. “Leave me alone, I’m fine.”

“I just…”

“I’ll tell you when I have a fever, Cable,” he said and clicked a link on the laptop. “Personal space, okay? So did you get me anything?”

Nate got up and rummaged through one of the bags he dropped when he’d arrived. The smell of Mexican take-out wafted through the air. Wade slammed the laptop shut and pushed the papers away and grabbed the burrito. It had been a good day stomach-wise for him, and if there was enough chilli in the food, then it would probably taste the same coming up as it did going down anyway, so there wouldn’t be much of a loss anyway.

As he practically inhaled the burger, Nate started shuffling through some of the papers on the bed, reading a few and putting them down. His hand fell upon a small jotter notepad and flicked passed the doodles onto pages and pages Deadpool’s awful handwriting. He wrote like a teenage boy, more worried about getting the information down on the paper than making it legible.

“New York?” Nate asked, his brow furrowed.

Wade nodded and handed him the laptop and pointed to a few open tabs so he wouldn’t have to stop eating to explain. The tabs were of news articles detailing the murders of a prostitute and a drug addict, nothing high profile. The hooker’s body had been found with her jaw ripped off and had died of blood loss, and the junkie had been poisoned with acid that had been strapped to his veins. Burned from the inside out. The details were brutal, explaining how the bodies were found, speculating what they had been through. They were very much the kind of details that would never be released to the press for fear of public hysteria.

“You think these were Jigsaw?”

Wade handed him another piece of paper that had been printed off and had too much writing down the columns for Nate to make much sense of it, but after reading the typed text it was clear what Wade was looking at. It was a series of police reports, proving that the articles were unerringly right. The thought of what these poor people had been through made Nate take a long breath.

“You think this journalist knows Jigsaw? Or is Jigsaw? For them to get all this right…?”

Wade tapped another tab.

“Oh.”

The journalist had been in a trial. Barry Morrin. He had had a few scoops in his day, usually from sacrificing sources to get the details of his stories. No wonder he had been targeted by Jigsaw. Not that Nate victim-blamed, but Jigsaw had a type it was true. But these articles, they were so detailed it was hard to believe Morrin didn’t have anything to do with it. His articles read like propaganda, repeating the story of Amanda Young, the drug addict who had turned her life around after her trial, the first known surviving victim of Jigsaw. As Nate flicked through Morrin’s other Jigsaw related stories, they all mentioned her, and how the survivors were stronger due to their trials and tests. How had no one looked at him before?

Wade finally swallowed. “I don’t think the murders themselves are related apart from the Jigsaw thing, but it’s the journalist we need. The way he writes his stuff, he says it’s as if these guys deserved everything they got. And I mean I kill people, but it takes a special fucking circumstance for me to rip someone’s jaw off. That kinda shit wouldn’t usually be released to the press so either he got the deets from a cop, or—“

“He’s working with Jigsaw.”

“Or is Jigsaw,” Wade nodded. “Either way I really wanna meet this guy.”

**_X GON GIVE IT TO YA, FUCK WAIT FOR YOU TO GET IT ON YOUR OWN, X GON—_ **

“Yeah?” Wade answered his phone and listened for a couple of seconds. “Gotcha. See you in ten.”

“Weasel?” Nate asked.

“Uh huh,” Wade nodded and climbed out of bed gingerly, careful not to hurt anything more than the cancer was already hurting. “He has something.”

Nate watched Wade pull on his shirt, the scars from the trial moving over his muscles. He wondered whether Weasel had thought of something that Hank McCoy hadn’t. Was it possible that this man, little more than a child, could have beaten Beast to an answer? Wade stowed his glock in the back of his jeans and made for the box where he was storing his painkillers. He pulled up his sleeve and stuck a patch to the inside of his forearm and fixed his sleeve so the patch wasn’t visible anymore. Nate had researched the type of painkillers Wade was taking to gauge what kind of pain the man was in. This patch was a hundred time stronger than morphine and if Wade needed that kind of pain relief…

“C’mon, let’s get this shit on the road. We got a lead, I got Mexican food: it’s a good morning.”

 

**** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ****

 

“Okay, before you get angry at me, this isn’t a cure.”

“Then why’d you drag me down here?”

Weasel was typing frantically on one of the many computers in his lab, rolling his chair from one to the other. He finally got up and gestured for the two to follow and lead them into a smaller room. The place was laden with various chemistry equipment, some of them holding different coloured liquids, others sitting empty, some hissing, some dripping. Weasel pulled open a drawer and took out a giant needle. He was so busy holding the needle away from himself, he didn’t notice Wade’s reaction. His jaw clenched and he felt his heart stop for a second. Wade hated needles. Why was it always needles? Nate placed his hand on Wade’s lower back, making the merc jump.

“You okay?” Nate spoke low enough that Weasel would not hear them over his work, as he filled the syringe with something yellow and bubbly. It looked radioactive.

Wade just nodded, but he managed to take a steadying breath and step forward, still keeping his distance from Weasel and that goddamn needle.

“Weasel just…” Wade cleared his throat. “What’s in that thing?”

The younger man looked up and took Wade’s hand and dragged him to the fold out cot in the corner of the room and sat Wade down on it. Wade didn’t even know why he was allowing himself to be pulled, surprised at Weasel’s sudden confidence. He sat on the bed and looked up at Nate. He looked huge, towering over the both of them, arms crossed and watching Weasel very carefully, but the scientist didn’t even notice. He was just too busy, humming to himself and wheeling over a tray with even more needles clanking on top of it. He held up the big needle, the mysterious yellow liquid practically glaring at Wade on the bed.

“This has to go into your spine— “

Wade was off the bed like a shot and Nate’s metal hand closed around Weasel’s wrist, stopping the scientist in his tracks. Wade stood at the far end of the lab (which wasn’t that far, only a couple of feet behind Nate), arms wrapped around his waist, trying to breathe easily so as not to start a coughing fit. He didn’t want a big deal of it made. Yeah, he hated needles but so did other people right? He just wanted everything to slow down for a couple of minutes so his head could clear and the adrenaline would stop pumping.

“Slow the fuck down for a sec,” Nate said, his other arm acting as a sort of barrier between Weasel and Wade. He knew Weasel couldn’t hurt Wade, but it was just instinct. It must have made Wade feel a little better too because the merc took a few paces forward, still keeping Nate between him and the needle. “Just tell us what’s in that, and he’ll think about it.”

He? Not we? Nate was leaving this up to Wade? Well that’s progress, Wade supposed.

“Right, uhh sorry,” Weasel licked his lips tentatively. “Can I have my hand back?”

“Not yet.”

“Um, okay,” he cleared his throat. “Remember when I told you about the crazy glue thing?”

They both nodded.

“Well, this is… okay, I’ll start from the beginning. Your healing factor is not gone.”

“You said that before,” said Wade, eyes still not straying from the needle.

“No I mean, it’s really not gone. It’s working. Think about it, your organs were shredded after what happened with Jigsaw, and your heart started working. You should have been a vegetable and your brain started responding. You woke up from a coma after four months able to walk about and fly to Russia. It’s dulled, yeah but it is still working. Probably not enough to keep you from dying though.” He nodded at the needle in his hand. “This will hopefully give it a boost. It won’t fix what’s wrong, but I assumed you’d want a quick fix until I figure out a real cure. Might even help your healing factor fight your cancer a little better too.”

There was silence for a couple of seconds.

“And it has to go into my spine?”

Weasel nodded. “With this kind of treatment yeah. Fastest way to your brain, without some kind of surgery. Which would kill you, I’m sure of it.”

Nate looked at Wade, the grip on Weasel’s arm unrelenting. Wade had gone a little green, but suddenly the merc kicked into action. He unbuttoned his shirt and moved forward and under Nate’s arm, who still wasn’t letting go of Weasel.

“You sure about this?”

Wade just nodded, not able to really speak with the needle staring right at him. Nate let go of Weasel’s arm with a long sigh. Everyone knew the dangers of this type of injection. Paralysis being the main one, and no one knew whether Wade could heal from that like he had with everything else.

“Jeans have to come off too.” Wade complied and Weasel carried on speaking, more to Nate now than to Wade who wasn’t doing well on the communicating side of things anymore. At least Weasel knew now how to make Deadpool leave him alone from now on. “I hope you have nothing planned for tomorrow coz this could get bumpy… Lie on your side and pull your knees up to your chin.”

“How bumpy?” Nate asked, watching Weasel very closely. If he hurt Wade, he knew of a couple of buildings in Murmansk to drop him off of.

“I read his Weapon X file,” he murmured, cleaning the spot where he planned to injection his concoction. “Kick-starting his healing factor then… Well, let’s just say it wasn’t without its bumps. I don’t know how long this could take or how rough it will be, but yeah. It’ll be over when it’s over, as they say. Take a deep breath, Wade and keep it in. Don’t move.”

The injection was over in minutes and Wade didn’t move a muscle, barely breathing even when Weasel gave him the go ahead. The injection hurt like a bitch but for the first time in his life, he was grateful that Weapon X had been brought into conversation. At least it gave him something to compare it to. When he’d been in Weapon X, it had taken his heart being torn out of his body by Ajax (haha, Francis…) and the screams of the other inmates to kick his healing factor into gear. This time it was a relatively simple injection.

Until the pain started.

It was like his entire body was being stabbed with white hot knives while he was rolling in salt. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t swallow, he couldn’t even think. An oxygen mask was put over his face and it made everything a tiny bit easier but it was like throwing a thimble of water on a house fire. The pain in his head caused a loud ringing in his ears which meant he couldn’t even hear himself sobbing. He was curled up in a ball, head resting on Nate’s lap. Nate was pushing Wade’s thin hair out of his face, making small shushing noises only looking up from the merc when Weasel got back from the McDonald’s in the city.

“If he doesn’t pull through this,” Nate growled at him. “I will pick you apart atom by atom while I figure out how to fix this.”

Weasel almost dropped his drink. “I thought you were supposed to be the nice one.”

“I’ll be nice when he gets better.”

Weasel decided to take his food elsewhere.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very short chapter but I hope to have a few short chapters out in quick succession over the next few weeks to wish you guys Happy Winter Holidays. If you, like me, don't celebrate anything, Happy December! 
> 
> Wanna wish you guys Happy New Year and hope 2016 is a helluva lot better than 2015. 
> 
> <3
> 
> Thanks to Sofia and Vic for all their help xx


	10. Under and Over It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for some not so nice feelings towards acute mental facilities and psychiatrists in general. 
> 
> It is kind of my feelings towards them but I'm allowed seeing as that's why I've been away so often ^_^"

He’d passed out from the pain a few times during the night, but every time he’d woken up, Nate was there. He’d shudder awake from another wave of pain in his head, in his chest, in his stomach, or anywhere else that decided to hurt, and Nate would be there shushing him, wiping the sweat from his brow or holding a little bucket for him to vomit into. The bucket was a nice touch, Wade thought. Nate had even thrown a blanket over him and taken it off three or four times when his fever spiked. He had never expected this kind of treatment from anyone, not since Vanessa really, but it hurt to remember her. He curled up under the blanket he’d been given and made a small grunt of pain as he moved his shoulder to pull the blanket over his head but something caught his eye.

The room was very white. Very white.

He sat up and looked around frantically. Where the hell was he? There were no windows here. Just a white metal door. His breath was coming in short bursts as he started to panic, realising where he was. A cell. An actual padded cell.

“No, no, no,” he breathed as he scrambled off the bed, ignoring the pain in his joints. He made for the door, but it opened and he stepped back as far as he could until his back hit the wall. Nate walked in, syringe in hand.

“Where the fuck am I?” Wade’s voice shook, but Nate looked confused. He stood in front of Wade, clearly worried (was the mutant ever not worried?), in his white lab coat, silver buttons shining in the harsh lighting. Nate reached out to him but Wade moved out of his reach. “Where am I?”

“Wade, calm down,” Nate said, holding his empty hands up. Wade didn’t even question where the syringe had gone. “You’re hallucinating, Wade. It’s okay.”

“The fuck am I hallucinating! What did you do?! I thought we’d gotten passed this doctors bullshit and you shut me in a fucking nuthouse?!”

“Nut—Wade, do you really think I would do that to you?” Nate’s voice got softer as he began to understand what Wade was seeing. He inched closer.

The merc scoffed. “Well, yeah, it wouldn’t be the first time you fucked me over when it came to doctors would it?”

Despite his words, Wade was starting to become very unsure. Everything looked so real, the padding on the walls of the cell, the lighting, but the wall behind him felt hard. Why would it feel hard? Nate took his hands and Wade tried to feel the material of the lab coat he knew he could see, but he couldn’t feel anything. He could see his fingers closing around the material but he couldn’t feel it. Well, that clinched it. He was hallucinating. If only knowing that made the hallucination go away. Nate’s TO hand cupped Wade’s cheek, making the man look at him.

“I would never put you in one of those places, Wade. This isn’t real. I promise you.”

Wade nodded into Nate’s hand, but the hand went to his forehead. Unlike all the other times Nate had tested the merc’s temperature, this time Wade didn’t pull away, instead he closed his eyes. The TO metal cooling his skin was absolute bliss. Nate pulled him into a strong hug and when Wade opened his eyes again, Nate’s ‘lab coat’ was still there but he could feel his cheek resting on Nate’s bare chest. The cold TO side, naturally. His heart was slowing down and the adrenaline leaving his system was making him feel like he was going to sleep where he stood. Nate of course, noticed and led him back to the bed and pulled the light blanket over him, just up to his waist.

“I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Fuckin’… better… be…” And with that, the merc fell asleep, refusing to let the cold, wet towel Nate had placed on his forehead wake him from his fevered sleep.

**** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ****

“Nnngghh…”

Nate was sitting on the floor, dozing as he sat against the bed. The noise made him start, looking behind him to make sure Wade was okay. He smiled at the sight of Wade curled up under a light blanket, having moved in such a way, he’d effectively tucked himself in. Nate pulled the blanket down to expose Wade’s face. The merc huffed and refused to open his eyes, trying to pull the blanket over his face again. Nate kissed him softly. Wade would deny it to the end, but Nate could feel the man melt into the kiss, nipping back and sighing contentedly. The amount of pain Wade was in now was negligible compared to the last few times he had woken up, and Nate could tell. Wade’s mind wasn’t just white noise and pain anymore, there were actual thoughts there now.

He pushed himself to his feet and sat on the bed and put his arm around the merc in time for Wade to open his eyes, but Wade sat up straight, realising they weren’t in Russia anymore. He shrugged Nate’s arm off to look around the room properly. They were in a small apartment, red brick walls and a spray-painted dick on the window. Cars hummed and beeped below the open window, so they were definitely in a high rise building.

“Am… Am I hallucinating again?”

“No, we’re in New York,” Nate answered. “Weasel said I could take you home and I figured you’d want to get a start on that journalist as soon as you can.” He paused. “This _is_ one of your apartments right?”

Wade looked around a little more, not recognising any of the furnishings. There wasn’t even a smell of food in the apartment. It was clear he hadn’t been here in a long time. Then something dawned on him.

“This is the flat where we first…”

“Oh thank God I thought I was the only one who remembered that. Was beginning to think this was the wrong floor.”

“Still it wasn’t a big first, just the first time off mission, like.”

Nate shrugged an arm around Wade’s shoulder and pulled the man to lean on him. “Just meant that it wasn’t just the adrenaline doing all the work.”

“Wow, Priscilla, such a romantic,” Wade smirked up at him. Nate bent to kiss him but Wade pushed him back against the headboard and straddled him. There was very little pain in his body it was extraordinary. Weasel had done a good job, even though Wade would never say it. His hand went to the back of Nate’s neck, the other into his hair, pulling Nate’s head back so Wade could kiss him open-mouthed. Wade wasn’t being rough, just very enthusiastic. Nate moaned breathlessly into the kiss, his hands squeezing Wade’s ass through his boxers. He was trying to be not obviously careful with the scars Wade had from the trial, but now that Wade’s pain levels were low, Nate didn’t feel like he needed to treat the man like glass.

He pulled his legs under him so he could push Wade down onto the mattress. The merc wrapped his legs around Nate’s waist and pulled him close, gasping as Nate kissed down his neck. He sucked a mark onto Wade’s chest realising that, this time, any marks would stay for a normal amount of time. Wade hummed and swore lightly, getting a little frustrated at the slow pace. He started rutting himself onto Nate’s hard stomach, about to tell him to take off his jeans when Nathan’s phone started ringing in the other room.

Wade grabbed Nate’s wrist as he pushed himself off the merc. “Ignore it, dude, come on.”

Nate looked at the closed door and back at Wade and then back to the closed door again. “Sorry, Wade, I’ve got people looking for the journalist. That might be them.”

“Couldn’t you pull a Dr. Manhattan and do both at the same time?” Wade called after him. “I swear I wouldn’t mind.”

Nathan ignored him, having only a very vague notion on who this Dr. Manhattan was. From some comic, probably, knowing Wade.

“Hello Neena, any news?”

“I’m fine Nathan. The weather’s lovely, Nathan. Thanks for asking, _Nathan_. I suppose I’m only doing you a favour.”

Nate smiled and rolled his eyes. “Sorry, how are you?”

Neena laughed at the other end of the line. “Always so polite. Don’t worry about it; it was just a bad joke. You were looking for this Morrin guy, right? Well, he has a very expensive apartment in The West Village but it looks like he’s out. And he’s been gone all day. Want me to text you the address?”

“That’d be great, Neena.”

“How’s Wade doing?”

Nate’s eyes widened. He had kept the fact Wade and he had been attacked a very closely guarded secret. He could count the amount of people who knew they had been in a Jigsaw Trial on one hand. How did she know?

“What are you talking about?” He asked as he looked at Wade as he leant against the doorframe and folded his arms, now fully dressed. “He’s fine.”

Wade tilted his head at Nate, wondering if he should be doing something constrictive to help with the phone call. He hated it when Nate got worried. It usually meant he should be worried too and no one likes to be worried just after jerking off. He liked enjoying his afterglow.

“It’s okay Nathan.” Nate could hear her clearing her surveillance equipment. “Everyone ‘s noticed that he’s been out of action a while. Everyone was just wondering where he went. You’d be the obvious person to ask, bar that kid who went to school with Parker but no one’s been able to find him since that fiasco in Vegas*. And you were nowhere to be found on Providence for months. Two plus two equals four.”

“Yeah, okay he was out of action for a while and he’s fine now. Can you text me that address? Thanks.” He hung up before Domino could ask any more questions.

“Good thing you got off the phone, I was about to starting shouting at you to put some trousers on,” Wade grinned.

“Are you sure you’re not twelve?” Nate chuckled and took Wade’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting his head back to kiss him before the merc answered him back. “A few of your guns are in the bag in the…”

Wade waved his glock in front of Nate’s face and stowed it in the back of his jeans. “I got a sixth sense for things that go bang. You know that.”

“I do. Now come on, we have to get moving before the journalist gets back to his apartment.”

 

 

 

*(psst, she's talking about Weasel. Look it up.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hallucinations Wade experiences in this chapter are due to the cancer still wracking his brain, meaning the hallucination is only visual. I'm not denying in any way, shape or form that Wade is schizophrenic it's just going to take a little longer to research that kind of hallucination due to the fact that schizophrenic hallucinations are very much all-encompassing and I would hate to write one thinking I'd researched enough only to insult every person who suffers from the illness every time they read my stuff.


	11. The Third Degree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for torture
> 
> This was a weird chapter to write because of the Original Character, Barry Morrin. I would love your thoughts and if people think he is an okay character, I might add a few more in. Tell me if you liked him, if you didn't like him. I didn't want to put a lot of emphasis on an OC purely because this is a fanfiction and not an original fiction, and any characters I add in (if people want to see more) will reflect that. So don't worry buddies 
> 
> Edit: slight edits for OC.
> 
> xx

“Come on, just five minutes.”

“No, Wade, let me just try first and we’ll see where that takes us.”

The door creaked open and the two men turned to see it slam shut again. They had been waiting in the apartment for more than two hours. Wade had even brewed some coffee while they had been waiting. Wade was wearing his mask, pulled up so he could argue and drink at the same time but as soon as the door opened the men sprang into action. Wade set the coffee down and rolled down his mask as he made his way towards the door, Cable a couple of feet ahead of him.

Out in the hallway, Wade drew his gun and fired at the man who had almost made it to the stairwell. He collapsed, holding his bleeding leg. Cable shot a disapproving look at Deadpool as he picked the man up and dragged him back to the apartment.

“What? He was getting away!”

Back in the living room, Deadpool cuffed Morrin to the chair while Cable put a tourniquet on the journalist’s leg. It wouldn’t stop the bleeding but it would be enough that the man wouldn’t pass out from blood loss half way through the interrogation. Deadpool was hanging back, letting Cable try his good cop/ bad cop routine. It never worked, no matter how hard Wade had tried to tell him, but Cable still wanted to try. Probably to stop Wade from going too far in the name of revenge.

“Let me explain your situation to you.” Cable sat down in a chair in front of him, talking in a low calm tone. “You are going to answer a few questions for me. If you don’t, Deadpool gets a turn to ask questions. And believe me, you’d rather my approach. Understand?”

Morrin stuck his chin out in defiance and spat at Cable. The spittle stopped in mid-air and hit the floor between them as Cable raised an eyebrow. Deadpool spluttered a laugh behind his mask.

“I was a war correspondent in the Congo and Sudan for years. You think I’m afraid of a few mutants?”

“You shouldn’t be afraid of us because we’re mutants, Morrin. You should afraid because behind me is Deadpool, who famously cannot follow a single order given to him—“

“Hey!”

“—and will make sure you get well acquainted with every single kitchen utensil you own.”

“If you do,” Morrin sneered. “I will make sure everyone gets well acquainted with how dangerous you people are. They only need a refresher course, you know.”

“Hence why I’d rather keep this civil. Now, Jigsaw. What do you know about him?”

Morrin flinched at the name. A good sign in Cable’s books. The man clearly thought for a moment, looking at his bleeding leg and over the areas on his body covered in scars from his trial, wondering if it was worth telling these two mutants anything. He looked up and shook his head. “Who’s Jigsaw?”

Four hours, the interrogation continued until Cable decided to bodyslide Morrin, Deadpool and himself to a warehouse on the Hudson River for more privacy. There Morrin was shackled arms above his head to the rafters, his feet barely scraping the floor. Wade hated the idea of torture but this was the least torturous way to torture somebody while still making sure they knew you meant business. If the CIA are allowed to do it, why not Deadpool? Of course it took a while to convince Cable of his plan, but he conceded.

Cable wasn’t unused to the idea of torture of course, unfortunately his whole life growing up in the future had meant he’d been raised with the knowledge that torture was taking place on every side of the war, no matter who felt they were on the right and just side. He had only hoped he could keep the past as separate from the future as long as possible.

They left Morrin hanging there, gagged and hooded for over four hours as they sat in one of the upstairs rooms in complete silence, thinking about how far they were taking this. At first Morrin had struggled, crying out from behind his gag, but he eventually quietened, knowing no one outside of the warehouse could hear his cries for help.

“We need the info,” Wade said, making Nate start in his chair. He took a shuddering breath and stood. “Bee ar bee.”

Wade was biting the inside of his cheek the whole way down the stairs, breath coming a little harder than before, as the anxiety and the sheer amount of self-hatred from what he was about to do started to rise in his chest. He couldn’t let Nate do this. As much as Nate would blame himself for letting it happen, it would be so much worse if Nate had a hand in the torture itself. He took a long breath and put a smile on his face.

“Hey Barry, how’s tricks? How’s it hanging?” He said as he pulled the hood off Morrin’s face and unhooked the gag from his mouth. Immediately, Morrin started screaming for help, making Deadpool clamp a hand over the journalist’s mouth. “You might wanna save your voice for the screaming later. No one can hear you so scream away til your heart’s content or it gives out. Your choice. All we want to know is how to find Jigsaw. How you know so much about Amanda Young. And what do you know about Jigsaw targeting mutants. Entiendes?”

Deadpool dragged over a small stool and sat on it in front of the journalist, looking up at him as he started playing with a switchblade, flicking it in and out, in and out. Morrin watched him in silence, trying not to flinch every time the blade flicked out into place. Being a journalist, Morrin had heard of Deadpool, heard of the things the mutant had done, people he’d murdered. He knew you didn’t get Deadpool angry. He'd been hanging here so long he'd lost track of time, and that was only because he'd refused to speak to Cable. He was trying not to shake, but his shoulders were on fire, making it hard to keep the trembling down. He was sure that Deadpool could see it. See he was weak and scared. No matter how much he tried to keep the trepidation from showing, his wet cheeks and heavy breathing were giving him away. Of course, he was scared. He wasn’t an idiot. These were dangerous people. _Mutants_. These were dangerous mutants. The powers made it worse, made it scarier. Why had he mentioned the Congo? The Sudan? He’d barely spent a month in both countries combined. He looked away from the switchblade, making Deadpool stand up.

“Looking a little pale there, Barry.”

Deadpool’s gloved hand patted the side of his face, making him gasp lightly and recoil away as much as he could. The mercenary noticed and grabbed his face to make him look into the cold and weirdly expressive mask.

“Hey. You wanna speed this up? It’s your choice.” Morrin noticed the smile had gone from his voice. “Do you?”

“No…” His answer was quiet, small.

Deadpool’s fist connected with his stomach without warning, making him swing on his chains. He was winded, gasping for air. He was still trying to breathe when Deadpool grabbed his face again.

“You gotta speak up, Barry, I can’t hear you.”

“No!! No, I—“ he coughed hard and groaned in pain. “No, I don’t.”

“You sassin’ me?” Morrin could hear the smirk in Deadpool’s voice. He had hoped to have been able to have some time to brace himself before this started. Deadpool was unpredictable, bloodthirsty. And Morrin was utterly terrified.

“No, no ‘m not,” he mumbled and Deadpool released him.

“Wanna answer my questions?”

“I can’t,” Morrin cried, shaking his head, eyes wide as he watched Deadpool pick up his switchblade again. _Oh God..._ “What are you doing?”

“Did you know you don’t really _need_ your kneecaps?” He bent and started cutting away Morrin’s jeans above the knees. Morrin couldn’t help it, the panic took over and he started screaming and kicking out at Deadpool. It didn’t work. He was pinned, unable to move and started to feel the searing pain in his right leg. The screams turned into sobs until he couldn’t hear himself anymore. This was it. After this, all he was going to know was pain. He'd never be able to walk again, and no one in his life was going to care. He'd burned every single bridge he'd had when he'd thrown his lot in with Jigsaw. It hadn't been worth it. This wasn't worth it. He'd lived through his own Trial, but was going to die at the hands of Deadpool.

“Wade!”

Deadpool looked up to Cable running down the metal stairs, telling the merc to stop. Deadpool was complaining that he was only getting started. He stood and they argued for what seemed like forever as Morrin started to come back to himself, sobbing with relief when he saw that Cable had intervened.His head lolled as the pain ebbed, making him look down to see the mess of his leg only to pass out when he saw the switchblade sticking out from behind his knee.

“Jigsaw is a group of people,” Cable said. “He thought about it, I heard him. I’ll explain later. Let him go.”

Deadpool narrowed his eyes at him. “What? He literally said he would name you and blast the mutants on whatever newspaper will listen to him. You really wanna risk that?”

“I’m not killing someone to stop that.”

Deadpool was walking backwards, giving himself some space. “No but that’s what I’m here for.”

He drew his gun and levelled it in the blink of an eye, shooting the unconscious Morrin between the eyes, killing him instantly. The body swung again, but this time it was lifeless. Something you’d see in a horror movie.

Nate froze. Why hadn’t he heard Wade plan that? He could have done something; he should have known. His healing factor was coming back. Wade was once again, unpredictable to Nate. He watched Wade pack his gun away and move towards the door.

“Can we find Jigsaw now please?” He held the door open for Nathan but the mutant didn’t move. “I shot him so he wouldn’t cause a thing later. I'm moving the story along. So let’s go.”

“Wade—“

“You can tell me off later, Summers. Come on, this isn't your first dead body. This isn’t even the first person you watched me kill!” Nate’s face darkened. “We can fight about it later after you tell me what you heard about Jigsaw. Maybe even after we kill whoever put a fucking bomb inside my head.”

Nate bodyslided out of the warehouse without a word, leaving Deadpool behind.

“So what? Am I supposed to walk?!” Deadpool shouted to the rafters, his voice echoing. He left. Needless to say he wasn’t waiting for an answer.

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is always helpful!!


End file.
